Janina had grown frightfully thin. Her complexion became pale and unhealthy, and from her enlarged glassy eyes there looked forth a dreadful and constant hunger! She walked about the theater like a shadow, apparently quiet and calm, but with that feeling of unceasing hunger mercilessly tearing her within and with despair in her face. There were whole days when she had not a bite of food, when she felt a painful emptiness in her head and heard only one thing echoing through her brain: "If I could only get something to eat! Something to eat!" Aside from that one desire, everything vanished from her mind and had no importance. A similar poverty existed throughout the whole company. The women shifted as best they could, but the men, particularly the more honest ones, sold everything they possessed, even their wigs, to save themselves. With what terror they awaited each evening! "Are we going to play to-night?" This whisper could be heard all over the theater: in the dressing-rooms, behind the scenes, in the restaurant-garden where the autumn wind frolicked, and on the deserted veranda, where the waiters, vainly waiting for guests, repeated it. It was also repeated by Gold, who sat huddled in his box office, shivering with cold. An oppressive silence reigned in the dressing-rooms. The funniest jokes of Glas could not chase the clouds of worry from the brows of the actors. They became careless in their make-up and none of them learned their roles, for everybody was waiting in dread suspense for the performance and every now and then going to the box office and asking in a whisper: "Are we going to play to-night?" Cabinski presented a new play every day, but he could not draw the public. He gave The Trip Around Warsaw and The Robbers, and still the house was empty. They played such curtain-raisers as Don Cesar de Bazan, The Statue of the Commander, and The Fortune Teller of La Voisin, but the theater remained as deserted as ever. "For goodness' sake, what do you want?" the director cried to the public from behind the curtain. "Do you think they themselves know what they want? If there were three hundred people present, then another three hundred would appear, but when there are only fifty with the addition of cold and rain, then only twenty remain," the editor explained to Cabinski, for of all those numerous acquaintances who used to come behind the scenes he alone remained, the rest having dispersed with the first rains. "The public is a herd that does not know where it is going to graze on the following day," said Mr. Peter, with animosity. Oh yes, they hated that public, and yet prayed to it. They cursed it, called it "a herd" and "cattle," threatened it with their fists and spat upon it, but only let that public appear in larger numbers, and they fell upon their faces before it and felt a deep gratitude toward that capricious lady, who had a different humor each day and each day bestowed her favors upon someone else.